A more full-featured NAF Alenia Surveyor plane, before and after upgradation

BEEGEAGLE’S BLOG
3 December, 2013

Picture shows NAF 931 (an ATR 42-500 MPA Surveyor plane) which has become a more advanced Special Mission Aircraft as can be gleaned from the photographs before and after the aircraft underwent an ELINT upgrade.

Note the dome on the fuselage just behind the wings in the bottom (upgrade) pic.

The now ELINT-compliant Surveyor plane can thus undertake the gathering of military or other intelligence through the monitoring of electronic signals such as satellite transmissions, rocket telemetry and radar emissions while itself being difficult to detect.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About beegeagle

BEEG EAGLE -perspectives of an opinionated Nigerian male with a keen interest in Geopolitics, Defence and Strategic Studies

This is great news to start the day with. Oga Beeg, We all don’t pray for this to happen,but in the event that NAF 931 gets knocked out in action, or immobilized (recent developments in Maidugri comes to mind), does the NAF have similar assets to carry on with ?

So for the purpose of blogging here and to make it as precise as it gets, I have also unilaterally upgraded the name of this aircraft from Alenia ATR 42-500 MPA Surveyor to ALENIA ATR 42-500 ELINT SURVEYOR 🙂

There are currently only three known users of ELINT aircraft in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

SOUTH AFRICA

* 3 modified Boeing 707’s in the SIGINT role, at least 2 of which are also configured for AAR operations.

ANGOLA

* Angola is believed to operate one 707, D2-MAY, that was modified in Israel with a variety of ELINT equipment and a long-range stabilized camera system.

One conducted an exhaustive search and was somewhat surprised to learn that even with Su-27 jets, Ethiopia neither own ELINT nor AWACS planes. All the more surprising because there is an ELINT system configured on the An-26 and Ethiopia have used Soviet hardware for so long now. Strange, innit?

Anyway..next target for us, ahead the expected delivery of JF17 Thunder jets, should be the Shaanxi ZDK-03 Karakoram Eagle AWACS plane, available for US$70 million apiece.

Is the Nigerian government procuring new frontline fighter jets for the Air Force? With the J-7 fleet limited to just 10 due to crashes I would think our supersonic frontline fighter would be boosted. I always thought the J-7 was meant to be an interim measure in the Nigerian airforce.